I. Content Ideas for Restaurants
1. Share recipes & food stories
What’s the single most important thing in a restaurant? Yes, its the food. And what do you get when you add a story and food; you get a food story. So start writing food stories, they can range from a recipe from your menu to a story about your favorite ingredients.
Some other examples :
- How to make an epic leftover’s dish!
- How Grandma’s recipe turned the tables for my restaurant!
- Restraunt XYZ’s secret recipe – Its love!
2. Make a wall where customers leave reviews and share a time lapse.
Set aside a wall, or even the front of a desk where customers can leave you reviews on a tissue, or a sticky note. Take pictures of this wall everyday as the number of reviews grows. You can then stitch these photos together to create a timelapse video. You can use this timelapse tool or there are several other apps for your phone/computer which can do it for you too. (When in doubt ask Google)
What’s a timelapse ? Really ? Ok , Read on here.
3. Take video testimonials from happy customers.
Do you get jubilant customers singing praises of your food everyday. Do some regulars gorge greedily on on the food?
Don’t waste that praise, don’t waste those happy eating moments. Ask you happy customers to leave you a small video testimonial, or to let you record them eating and loving it. You can ask your staff to take there videos on the fly on their phones. Don’t worry about the quality of the videos, the lack of quality will actually make the videos more authentic.
Keep the videos short, not by asking your customers for shorter testimonials but by clipping out and using only the best parts. 10seconds is good. You can then share there videos on your blog, facebook, twitter,snapchat, tumblr, instagram, pinterest and whatever else comes up. Also checkout boomerang– sometimes all you need to capture is the smallest emotion!
4. Share your journey of becoming a restaurateur.
If someone hasn’t told you this already, owning a restaurant is quite cool :B. Not everyone has a restaurant of their own, and your story is something people would want to read about. How did you start your restaurant? Was is a family restaurant ? If yes, then there must be a lot of family lore behind it. There’s a story behind every idea, every business and every businessman
There’s a whole host of other ideas you can write about :
- How a side dish became your star attraction!
- How home delivery turned your business around.
- How you poached your favorite deli’s chef.
5. How did your restaurant get its name ?
The headline is as clear as day. If you run a restaurant and it has a name. It must have a story, and as indulging customers we deserve to know how the name came about. Maybe you don’t think its a cool way to have decided your name, leave that up to your reader’s. The story behind the name is a tale that must be told.
Maybe you don’t like your restaurant’s name, maybe you didn’t get to decide, maybe you’re stuck with it. There is a story behind that too. Trademark issues, family legacy and other complicated stories. There you even have an epic headline – ” Trademark issues, Family Legacy and other complicated reasons why my restaurant is called …”
6. #FoodPorn
According to wikipedia,
” Food porn is a glamorized spectacular visual presentation of cooking or eating in advertisements, infomercials, blogs, cooking shows or other visual media,foods boasting a high fat and calorie content, exotic dishes that arouse a desire to eat or the glorification of food as a substitute for sex.”
Wow! Do wiki writers know how to make things boring or what ? Foodporn is food that looks so good that it’s better than watching porn! Also #foodporn is a very popular hashtag used on all of social media to showcase delightful food.
Foodporn is food that looks so good that it’s better than watching porn!
Don’t worry about them fancy photographers to take them photos. Your trusty phone camera will do and these tips will get you well on your way. Now just plate em(the food), take em(the photo) and insta them! You could even start your own #foodp0rn gallery on your blog and push the same photos to all of your social networks.
Pro-tip :Do not forget to talk about the food in the description!
7. Poll new dishes
Better than even getting a huge number of followers, readers or subscribers is getting a lot of engagement on your post. You want customer’s talking about your restaurant and your food. A great way to do that is to run polls. Unless you are one of those old school restaurants that they never change their menus, you must be adding new dishes to your menu every now and then. So, instead of deciding by yourself what your customer’s would like; give them a chance to decide their dish-to-be!
This way you can have engaging discussions with customers about your food without pushing them to talk about it. You can even ask customers to suggest changes in a recipe. And if enough people agree to the change, incorporating it should be a no-brainer. While, the best part by far about running a poll on your new dishes is that, customers now know you have a new dish coming up, they know what it’s going to be and they can’t wait to try it! All the social media numbers in the world aren’t as good as happy customers in your restaurant. 🙂
8. In-house Event Announcements
Are you having a cook-off between your chefs ? If you’re not, you totally should! Or maybe you’re hosting an “All-you can eat : Ribs” event(Mmmm…) . Are you having a themed halloween dinner? Either way plan in advance and send a shout-out to your blog readers. Put in all the details of the event, throw in a reader’s only promotion or two for good measure too. Everybody loves feeling special, make your readers feel special too.
The events don’t always have to be as fascinating as my imagination. You’re Special Sunday course, is as worthy of a blog and social mention as any other.
9. Celebrity Eaters
5 commandments of to be followed
- Thou shalt invite celebrities to eat at your restaurant.
- Thou shalt pamper them.
- Thou shalt take pictures and testimonials.
- Thou shalt write about it and post it online.
- Thou shalt share on social media and ask said celebrities to share your post as well.
And in all seriousness, this works. You may not always be able to invite big celebrities, look for local celebrities, popular food bloggers and such. Sometimes celebrities may just walk-in to your place. Make the most of it!
10. History of Food
If you’ve ever been haunted by the question, “Why am I here? What is my purpose in life ?” George Carlin puts your ego in its place. I can’t find the exact quote but what he essentially says is that, “You’re here, you look for food, you eat, you live”
Food has been around for longer than we have.(we were and are food too!) There is a lot of rich history to food, find interesting facts about food, discover the origins of your favorite dish and there’s so much more to explore.
A few examples:
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